Beverage container holders provide a secure location to place a beverage container when an individual needs to free up both hands for some other reason or if the individual just wishes to relax from holding the beverage container. One prime example would include the operator of an automobile placing a beverage container into a beverage container holder in order to free up both hands in order to properly operate an automobile. Beverage container holders typically have a receptacle that consists of a base with a flat top surface for a beverage container to rest on, a sidewall extending from the base that at least partially surrounds the beverage container and prevents the container from tipping over, and an open top portion that allows for the easy placement in or retrieval from the beverage container holder of the beverage container.
Some beverage container holders also include flexible gripping members that protrude toward the interior of the sidewall when there is no container in the beverage container holder. When a beverage container is placed into the beverage container holder, the gripping members will flex away from the interior of the sidewall and provide a gripping force on the beverage container to provide a more stable and secure placement of the container.
Various efforts have been made to include gripping members that provide additional gripping forces to provide a more stable and secure placement of a beverage container in a beverage container holder.
It is known to manufacture the gripping members and other components of the beverage container holder in separate processes. This configuration presents design difficulties which require the packaging of several individual components into the final product. Also, this configuration will require additional time and expense to produce, because the individual components are manufactured separately and assembly of the components is required to obtain the final product.
It is also known to manufacture a beverage container holder having gripping members from a two-step molding process, where the gripping members are made from a soft material, such as a soft plastic or rubber that is overmolded onto the remaining portion of the beverage container holder. Since the beverage container holder is manufactured from a two-step molding process, this configuration eliminates the packaging difficulties presented in the design process and the requirement that individual components be assembled into a final product. This configuration however, may result in unwanted efforts or complications to insert or remove the beverage container because of the high coefficient of friction typical of soft plastic or rubber.
It would be desirable to provide a beverage container holder that is manufactured from a two-step molding process to eliminate the individual manufacturing of components, the need to assemble the individual components into the final product, and the packaging difficulties presented in the design process, while at the same time providing a gripping member that is composed of a material having a low coefficient of friction which allows a beverage container to be easily inserted or removed from the beverage container holder.